He seemed
to be a broken man. Why not call him Logan? Struck down in his prime by a loss
of employment, the unfaithfulness and abandonment of his wife, and a series of
catastrophes that humiliated him in front of his children, Logan wandered into
the auditorium one day in response to a friend’s invitation. He was overwhelmed
by the courtesy and friendliness of the people, and sat awestruck during the
sermon. It seemed as though the preacher he had met only moments before was
speaking to the issues of Logan’s life, and the Bible pierced him through with
conviction. Suddenly, he found hope again and his spirits soared with renewed
optimism. He left the auditorium convinced everything would turn out well after
all.

What
Logan did not realize was that he left the auditorium in the same condition
that he arrived. Nothing had changed. No sins had been forgiven. No heart had
been quickened. No miracle had taken place in his life. He was just happy where
he had been sad, and was encouraged by what he had heard instead of being sad
and despondent. In reality, however, all was the same, and nothing had changed.
Logan’s misunderstanding, you see, was that he had no real comprehension of his
underlying problems. His underlying problems included being dead in trespasses
and sins, being estranged from God, possessing a heart that was deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked, having a boatload of sins committed against
God over the course of his life, and God being very angry with him. Because he
considered his sins to be mere mistakes, because he gave no thought whatsoever
his spiritual condition or the antagonism that existed between him and his
Creator, Logan completely misread the state of his soul and fancied himself to
be only slightly uninformed, which he thought was remedied by hearing two
sermons. Logan had no idea that his predicament was extreme. He not only had a
severe problem, he was a severe problem. Though he was happy to have his
optimism restored, he had no idea that he had no real basis for hope, and that
the last thing he ought to have had was any sense of optimism that things would
be better for him in the future. God had granted no such assurances to him,
despite how he felt.

We
agreed at this time last week that extreme measures are typically taken to
address only the most extreme problems. We also agreed that as we approach
Christmas, our consideration of the birth of Jesus Christ as a prelude to His
sinless life and earthly ministry, His substitutionary death on Calvary’s
cross, and His glorious resurrection from the dead for our justification, is
proof positive that no more extreme measures could be taken by God to remedy
the problem sinners have with sin.

This
morning we will take a second look at this matter of extreme measures. Remembering
that if God could have sent even His best man to resolve this issue of sin, He
would have done so, and if He could have sent His most powerful and competent
angel to resolve this issue of sin, He would have done so, consider what God
did do. Consider two extreme measures taken by God before He sent
His Son to be born in Bethlehem:

First, THE EXTREME
MEASURE OF EXPULSION FROM THE GARDEN OF EDEN

To
refresh your memory, when God created Adam, we are twice told that He placed
the man in the garden He had created, Genesis 2.8 and 15, “to dress and to keep
it.” Adam’s only prohibition was concerning the eating of a single kind of
fruit. I read Genesis 2.16-17:

16And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree
of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17But of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Because it was not
good for the man to be alone, God then made Eve to be Adam’s wife and helper. All
seemed well in the Garden of Eden, until the serpent tempted Eve and she ate
the forbidden fruit, and she “gave also unto her husband with her; and he did
eat.” When they disobeyed God, they each became sinners by a single act of
rebellion against God’s revealed will. It was a catastrophe.

As
I mentioned last week, since Adam was the federal head of the entire as yet
unborn human race, his disobedience and the consequences of his disobedience
have most adversely affected all who have descended from him. What were these
consequences of Adam’s Fall into sin? Remember that God had given Adam fair
warning, as I pointed out moments ago, when I read God’s warning to Adam: “in
the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

There
were consequences for Adam deriving from his single sin, consequences for all
mankind, and consequences for the entire universe that God had only recently
created: Of course, Adam died, just as God had said would happen. However, it
is safe to say that the ramifications of Adam’s sin were not at all appreciated
by him until after his disobedient act had been perpetrated. In addition to
Adam becoming a sinner, we now know that Adam’s descendants were born sinners,
springing from the loins of a man who was now a sinner by nature. Romans 5.12
is explicit: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by
sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Romans 5.14
declares that death reigned because of Adam. In First Corinthians 15.22, we are
told, “in Adam all die.” Coming into this world spiritually dead, everyone then
experiences physical death. Of course, there is also the consequence of the
lake of fire. Originally created for the punishment of the devil and his host
of sinful angels, it is also the eternal destiny of every person descended from
Adam who is born and who then dies without being converted to Jesus Christ,
Matthew 25.41. The sin of Adam also brought about universal consequences, with
Adam’s sin against God being a spiritual crime of such outrage that all of
God’s physical creation is said to groan and travail in pain because of it,
Romans 8.22.

Therefore,
of course God, Who cannot lie, being a just and a righteous God, kept His Word
and took immediate action against Adam’s rebellion: First, He confronted the
man and the woman. Though He found them hiding from Him, an insult to His
omniscience and omnipresence, God still provided them an opportunity to explain
their outrageous actions. Of course, they had no justification for their
rebellion, but instead as sinners always do, attempted to place the blame
elsewhere.[1]
After hearing their lame excuses for disobeying Him, God then pronounced His
judgment upon them for their sins, in Genesis 3.16-19:

16Unto the
woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow
thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband,
and he shall rule over thee.

17And unto
Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast
eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it:
cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it
all the days of thy life;

18Thorns
also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of
the field;

Surprisingly, and
perhaps because He had pity on the naked and guilty creatures that stood before
Him, God showed that even when pronouncing and executing judgment, He is
merciful. Genesis 3.21: “Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.” Though
some are of the opinion that these clothes made from the skins of animals
suggest that Adam and Eve may have found grace in the eyes of the LORD, it must be pointed out that Adam is never
mentioned in connection with faith or with grace in the Bible, but everywhere
as the head of a dead race. Notice once more how Paul refers to Adam in First
Corinthians 15.22: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made
alive.” What is right is right, and what was their just due was their just due,
so God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, Genesis 3.22-24:

22And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one
of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take
also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

23Therefore
the LORD God sent him forth from the
garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

24So he
drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims,
and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of
life.

God
had warned Adam before creating Eve that if he ate the forbidden fruit he would
die. “. . . in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Therefore,
though Adam lived out the remainder of his physical life before he met his
death, a span of 930 years, God’s warning was literally fulfilled. When he was
ejected from the Garden of Eden, and separated from the life of communion and
interaction with God, Adam straightway experienced spiritual death. As a result
of his spiritual death, Adam’s physical death and all the ills and problems
that led up to it were inevitable.

Would
you conclude that expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, barring their
reentry with a flaming sword to prevent their access to the tree of life, and
visiting them with spiritual death that would necessarily lead eventually to
physical death, was an extreme measure? I would say so. God responded to their
wicked and flagrant sin by enacting the extreme measure of expelling them both.
The question to be asked, however, is whether or not the extreme measure God
took remedied the problem. The answer, of course, is that it did not, and God
certainly knew that it would not. Adam and Eve’s first child was Cain, who was
also the world’s first murderer. Adam and Eve eventually died, showing that
their sin remained, or they would not have died. Death has reigned throughout
the human race since Adam. Therefore, that extreme measure, the expulsion of
Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, though certainly called for as a
consequence of their sin against God, seems to have remedied no problems
related to sin. This extreme measure was entirely punitive and not corrective.

Next, THE EXTREME
MEASURE OF THE WORLDWIDE FLOOD

Expulsion
from the Garden of Eden did not eliminate the sinfulness of the human race, and
there is no indication that God intended to address anyone’s future behavior
when he expelled Adam from the garden and blocked his reentry with a flaming
sword wielded by angels. Once again, let me state that Adam’s expulsion was
purely punitive. Evidence to support this conclusion is found in Genesis
chapters four, five, and six. As the human race multiplied over the centuries
that followed the Fall, the Genesis record takes us from the sad account of
Cain’s wicked, murderous and selfish life to the bigamist and manslayer Lamech,
and on to a series of other men, each of whom lived and died, lived and died,
and lived and died (excepting Enoch, of course).

By
the time the Genesis narrative arrives at chapter six, we have intermingled
with the record of a demonic attack on the human race God’s conclusion about
the ever-worsening spiritual condition of the human race, Genesis 6.3-6:

3And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with
man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and
twenty years.

4There were
giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God
came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the
same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

5And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was
great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his
heart was only evil continually.

6And it
repented the LORD that he had made man on
the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

Notice
verse five again, where we read, “the wickedness of man was great in the
earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually.” No wonder God’s heart was grieved. It is understandable
that “it repented the LORD that he had
made man on the earth.” His long-suffering finally come to an end after 1500 or
1600 years, God resorted to another extreme measure. Genesis 6.7: “And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created
from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and
the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.”

You
know the rest. With the exception of eight individuals, four married couples,
and pairs of animals with whom they enjoyed the safety of the Ark that Noah and
his sons built, every other animal on land or that flew in the air, including
every man, woman and child then living on the earth, died by drowning. Genesis
7.17-23 summarizes the extreme measure God took to punish the wrongdoing of
mankind:

17And the
flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the
ark, and it was lift up above the earth.

18And the
waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went
upon the face of the waters.

19And the
waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were
under the whole heaven, were covered.

20Fifteen
cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.

21And all
flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of
beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:

22All in
whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry
land, died.

23And every
living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man,
and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were
destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were
with him in the ark.

Can
you digest the horror of the annihilation of the entire human race, with the
exception of eight souls? Since God is just and righteous, how awful must have
been the magnitude of their sinfulness for God to have visited them with so
great a punishment? So extreme a measure can only be a response to a problem, a
crime, an offense of such horror that a measure that extreme was appropriate.

Psalm
136.1 reads: “O give thanks unto the LORD;
for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.” Twenty-five
more times in the 136th Psalm alone we are told, “His mercy endureth
forever.” Therefore, being mindful of the goodness and mercy of God, His nature
as a righteous and holy God demands that His punishment be a proportional
response to the seriousness of the offense being punished. Thus, we are
reminded that sin is vastly more serious an offense than our minds can
comprehend.

The
question that has been asked before and needs to be asked again is whether
God’s extreme measure of judging the entire world by means of a worldwide flood
brought sin to an end. The answer is that it did not. No sooner did Noah and
his sons leave the Ark and built an altar and worshiped, than “the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse
the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is
evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as
I have done.”[2]
God set the rainbow in the sky as a token of His promise to never again destroy
the world by flood, after which Noah got drunk on wine.[3] Therefore,
though the Flood put an end to the sins mankind was committing against God by
ending their lives here on earth, it did nothing to alter the nature of men. Even
Noah resumed sinning against God.

Two
extreme measures, expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and
destroying the entire world by means of a worldwide flood. Staggering to the
mind when you think about it, but a proportionate response to the extremity of
the wickedness God was dealing with. Consideration of these extreme measures
will enable you to recognize the greatness of God’s grace and love when He took
the extreme measure of sending His Son to be born of the Virgin Mary. We
celebrate it as Christmas, though it is one of a chain of events that included
the Savior’s death on the cross for our sins. It was an extreme measure taken
by God to deal with a problem that is far greater than any of us really
recognize, the problem of sin.

Since
God has employed extreme measures, He demands that sinners respond with extreme
measures. Positively, there is the extreme measure of faith in Christ. Negatively,
there is the extreme measure of repenting of sin. These two aspects of the
extreme measures called for by God in response to the gospel of Jesus Christ
can be summed up in the words of Jesus:“Come
unto me.” Nothing less will do for the safety and salvation of your eternal and
undying soul.